Adriano Amaral at Bielefelder Kunstverein

Photography: Philipp Ottendörfer, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Bielefelder Kunstverein

Adriano Amaral’s work is marked by things from his immediate surroundings. The human body as a closed and simultaneously porous entity, as well as the perception of architectural space and the value of everyday objects determine his artistic praxis. In his earlier individual presentations, Amaral was already using mostly very contrasting materials to generate various connections with parts of the human body. Electric cables stretch across spaces like veins to animate neon objects. Thin concrete mouldings of a grating were distributed like skeletons on the floor. The characteristics of replicas of a solid wheel chock, moulded in silicone and filled with water, made them resemble soft human organs. Various materials and states of matter intermingle in Amaral’s sculptures, objects and installations: natural elements like water, light, air and earth encounter artificial products like silicone, make-up, clothing, aluminium, artificial resin or concrete. Many recent works have arisen as castings produced directly in the urban space and in the sense of a reversed objet trouvé.

The search for unexpected connections between humans, materials and architecture continue as an artistic approach in the exhibition itself. It is exclusively new works and groups of works that are being presented, embedded in an overall spatial concept. The entire ground floor thus becomes an obstacle course made up of rather smaller sculptures, architectural interventions and changes in the space itself. Materials and objects like shoes, bones, oxygen cylinders, silicone, water, aluminium, ultra-sound gel, bark and respirator masks constitute a formal point of departure.

The exhibition at Bielefelder Kunstverein is the first institutional solo exhibition by the Brazilian artist and co-commissioned with the Vleeshal in Middelburg (NL), where it will be shown from January until April 2, 2017 in a different form.

Adriano Amaral, born 1982 in Ribeirão Preto (BR), lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). In the recent years solo presentations were shown, among others, by De Ateliers in Amsterdam (NL), at Estudios Tabacalera in Madrid (ES), SpazioA Pistoia (IT) (all 2016), Frieze Focus in London (GB), Mendes Wood DM in São Paulo (BR) or Múrias Centeno in Porto (PT) (all 2015). Furthermore he was represented in group exhibitions most recently at MMOMA — Moscow Museum of Modern Art (RUS), Beelden Aan Zee in Den Haag (NL) (both 2016), at Caixa in Rio de Janeiro (BR, 2015) as well as at the Zabludowicz Collection in London (UK, 2014).